Derek Poole held the ball of soft fur in his practiced hands, carefully examining its every aspect – length and consistency of the coat, the shape of the body and the broad head and the length and symmetry of the long ears – before making a pronouncement.

“This is my No. 1. That’s an excellent rabbit,” said Poole, referring to the white American fuzzy lops rabbit in one of several cages lining the judge’s table before him.

Columbia County is considering revising a new ordinance regulating pawn shops and other buyers of used merchandise, after it was challenged by a local lawyer who questioned its constitutionality.

The ordinance 15-22, which was passed by commissioners and adopted as county code in April, is intended to assist police in tracking sales of potential stolen goods at area pawn shops, jewelers and other businesses that buy used merchandise from the public, said Columbia County sheriff’s Capt. Steve Morris.

Columbia County authorities are trying to identify a man suspected of molesting an 8-year-old girl at the Grovetown Wal-Mart store.

Columbia County sheriff’s deputies were called to the Wal-Mart at 5010 Steiner Way at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon, where they met with the girl’s mother. The 39-year-old Grovetown woman told police that while shopping that afternoon, her daughter told her an unknown man spoke to her and touched her inappropriately. The child’s mother found the man and confronted him, but he left the store.

The five men who have declared interest in running for the Columbia County Commission District 3 seat may have a wide and varied array of backgrounds and experience, but the do share one interest — getting a handle in the county’s rapid growth.

Sylvester and Mary Brown acknowledge that much was lost when their house was destroyed by fire last year.

What they prefer to talk about, however, is how much was gained.

“I don’t believe that the Lord would allow anything to pass through his hands that wasn’t for the greater glory or the greater good,” Sylvester Brown said Thursday, seated in the sunroom of his newly restored and refurnished home on Callaway Court in Martinez.

The Browns’ home was gutted by a fire that broke out the night of Feb. 14, 2014.

The nature of political protest is that it almost always has to offend someone.

This past weekend there was such an incident at Valdosta State University that made national news when an Air Force veteran was arrested after she disrupted a group’s effort to desecrate an American flag as part of a protest on campus.

The unidentified group had placed a U.S. flag on the ground to allow people to walk on it in a vaguely defined protest about the legacy of our nation’s history with slavery.

The group behind Columbia County’s first proposed charter school announced it has a contract to purchase land for a future school site near Blanchard Woods Park.

The Columbia County School for the Arts has an agreement to buy 15 acres of property at the corner of Blanchard Woods Drive and Willie Daniel Drive, which is contingent on the school obtaining approval of its charter from either the county Board of Education or the State Charter Schools Commission, according to Todd Shafer, a founding member of the group.

When Claire Brownfield enters the storied halls of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point this fall, she will be following the footsteps of some of the most famed military leaders the world has known -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, to name just a few.

Claire, however, doesn’t have to look in history books for inspirational West Point alumni, she lives with two.

Her parents, Army Col. Mike Brownfield and Sally Brownfield are also West Point graduates.